


Obviously Five Believers

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-12
Updated: 2005-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-15 15:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14792991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Five believers.





	Obviously Five Believers

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Obviously Five Believers**

**by: Delightfully Eccentric**

**Character(s):** Sam, Josh, Toby, CJ  
**Pairing(s):** CJ/Toby  
**Category(s):** General  
**Rating:** TEEN  
**Disclaimer:** The West Wing characters and histories aren't mine, and are used here for love, not money.  
**Summary:** Five believers.  


("if I see the real thing") When he tried, Josh could tell when Sam wanted something. He made a show of tidying his desk, pushing Donna's careful piles into disarray, as if to show a space could be cleared in his mind so easily. 

Sam looked immaculate, even when he said, "Sex." 

"Sex?" 

"Sex." 

"Sex?" 

"Old buddy. Old friend. Sex." 

Josh sat down heavily and jumped back up upon the realisation that he'd cleared the stapler onto his chair. 

Sam adjusted his glasses carefully. It wasn't new, this constant appearance of trying to ensure he didn't miss anything, but it had sharpened this year - as had everything else. 

A few months in office and already secrets strained the air between them. Josh wasn't sure Sam had noticed yet. He was almost sure Sam didn't have secrets. Yet. 

"I'm afraid to ask," he said. 

Sam smiled. 

It was hard to believe, sometimes, that Sam had had time since they'd met to graduate again; forge a career or two; almost get married. 

Sam put his hands in his pockets and slumped gracefully against the wall so it looked like he was sitting. "I haven't had any since the Inauguration." 

"Sex?" 

"Sex." 

"Okay." 

"Since Lisa, actually." 

Josh's hand clenched around the stapler and a shard of metal popped out. 

"Have you?" Sam asked. "Since Mandy?" 

"That's…" 

They were back in Sam's dorm room because it was marginally more private than Josh's shared apartment, and Sam was lying on his bed with his arms behind his head, his tie loosened and his feet on the wall. Josh was swinging on the lonely swivel chair, supposedly imparting the wisdom of a legislative assistant, but really they were talking about the girls in the next hall and comparing scores. Josh had lied. 

"No," he said, "I haven't." 

"Sex?" 

"Sex." 

Sam again touched the tip of his finger to the bridge of his glasses. "Don't you think that's mildly freakish?" 

"Freakish?" 

"Only mildly." 

Josh dumped a paperweight and the minutes of a half dozen committee meetings onto the floor and reclaimed his seat. 

Sam waited patiently for a response, before explaining, "We're two intelligent, successful, virile young men. We're each a great package." 

Successful. They hadn't even started. 

"Virile?" 

Sam could put a lot into a shrug of his shoulders. It must be the kind of thing they taught at Princeton. 

Josh cleared his throat. "We have more on our minds than... that." 

The world in his mind kept changing. When they sat in meetings watching their President talk, or read over Toby's corrections to his words, he could see the same thing happening for Sam. 

"Sure." Sam's body half-twisted as he began to study intently the scribbled notes on the blackboard. He wrote his birthday, and broke the chalk. It rolled and was lost beneath the filing cabinet. 

"Was that all? 'Cause..." Josh waved at an empty space where he dimly recalled Donna placing something very, very important. Yeah. He'd have to think about that at some point. 

"You know just then, I think I said I haven't had sex since Lisa." 

"Yes. Yes, you did." 

"What I meant to say was I *hadn't* had sex since Lisa." 

"You hadn't." 

"Until last night, is what I meant to say." 

Another thing that hadn't changed, Sam leaving a trail and waiting for information to be coaxed from him. One might have been tempted to call him a tease. 

"Who?" 

"I went for a beer with Toby but he's been in a *terrible* mood, so I was leaving, but this woman-" Josh had never been good at hiding his grimaces. "I really like her." 

"You're seeing her again?" 

"Well." The smile drooped. "I didn't quite catch her phone number." 

"How 'bout her last name?" 

Sam perked up. "I'm sure it started with a P. Or possibly a B. It was definitely a consonant." 

Josh ran his hands through his hair and settled them over his ears so he could listen between the cracks. 

"Her first name?" 

"Marissa." 

Josh blinked. "Marissa?" 

"Marissa." 

"That kind of sounds like a hooker's name. You didn't, um, find your wallet a little lighter in the morning?" 

"No!" 

"Are you sure?" 

"I think I'd be able to tell, Josh." 

Josh shrugged in a crumpled sort of way, and added to the impression with another attack on his hair. 

Sam was the only person he knew who didn't look like a schoolteacher when he peered over the top of his glasses. He looked like a boy. 

"Is this a problem?" 

"As long as she's not... Hey, she's not a Republican, is she?" 

"I didn't quite catch her voter registration." 

"Okay." 

"Just..." Maybe Sam did have more on his mind than women. 

"Yeah?" 

"I'm not used to thinking about more than two people at times like this." 

"Aw, hell, Sam, you didn't-" 

"No, no, I mean you. Well, not- I mean, the President." 

Sam straightened up and sunk his hands deeper in his pockets. He reminded Josh a little of the President, but softened around the edges. 

"I'm not used to wondering if the country would consider a woman suitable before I go to bed with her." 

"Yeah," Josh said softly. 

"I'm not sure I'm well-equipped to assess that kind of thing. I was wondering if we had, like, some kind of office to vet our potential partners." 

A dry laugh rustled through Josh, rousing him from his nostalgia. After a moment's innocence, Sam joined in. 

"I don't anticipate any problems," Josh reassured. "We're all intelligent adults. We all believe that what we're doing is the real thing. We're not going to throw it away on some stupid..." 

Sam laughed louder this time. "Whoa, Josh, maybe it really has been too long for you." 

He grinned. Extremes had been straining his face since this began, dimples stretched impossibly in elation and brow clenched in new ways when there was bad news from Leo's office. 

"It really has." 

Sam's blue eyes flickered and looked away. "I don't think I realised I was selling my life to this." 

"It's worth it, though." Josh looked fiercely for signs of disbelief. "It is." He retrieved the remote from the floor and pointed it at one of his TVs, raising CJ's voice to audibility. "The world's watching her right now." 

The latest headlines about the siege at Casey Creek flashed across the bottom of the screen. CJ looked harried and sounded like a harridan, trying to make herself heard over the calls of the rabble. 

"How long is it going to take them to get over this?" Sam shook his head. Josh quieted him with a wave of the hand, checking off the inevitable questions in his head, anticipating the hard ones. 

"Rules of engagement prohibit firing unless..." 

"...Discussion about suspending the rules of engagement?" 

"...Some of the agents on the ground thought they were." 

CJ recoiled as the wave of reaction to her statement hit her. Josh cringed at her flared eyes. He was going to see a lot of this clip in the following weeks. Anyone watching would see she was lost. 

"There was a breakdown in communication?" 

"That's not what I'm saying-" 

"Did the Director of the FBI suspend the Constitution?" 

Josh and Sam exchanged a look. Once the crowd was hushed, CJ found herself with nothing to say. A hand went to her hair and got caught in a tangle. Her promise of more at the five o'clock briefing sounded painfully like a stammer. 

They watched her hurry from the podium, stumbling just before she disappeared from view, cries of her name echoing behind. 

Sam took his hands out of his pockets. They were clenched into fists. He never looked boyish when they were backed into a corner. "She's never worked on this scale before. She wasn't properly informed." He bit his lip. "Her father's visiting next week." 

"You think Toby's gotten to her yet?" 

Sam shook his head. "Not back from lunch." He coughed delicately. "He and Andi have some things to work out." 

"Papers to sign?" 

A quiet nod and a moment of silence, then Josh swallowed. "Guess it's up to us, then." 

He pushed the rest of the contents of his desk aside as he stood up. "Hey, Sam." 

Sam paused in the doorway. 

"Was it good?" 

Sam's smile moved things beyond the realm of the possible. "Oh, yeah," he confirmed, his tongue flicking his lips. 

"Josh?" He fingered a child's rendering of the seal, hanging askew, and waved the other arm wide. 

"It wasn't as good as this." 

* 

("time matters") 

Steadfastly unfazed, Tal Cregg stood back while his daughter shepherded the chosen elite of the press photographers into position. CJ whispered a compliment into the First Lady's ear and earned a beam for the cameras. His hand on CJ's arm, The President waved jovially at Tal. 

"We'll get one with your dad before he leaves," he promised. 

"Thank you, sir, but we should get on with this." She avoided looking at the handful of reporters granted access, glancing back too many times at her father. 

The ballroom was putting on a show fit for a president, and for those who wanted to see what a president could show them. Everything shone and everything looked bigger than it was. She recognised the illusion but her heart thudded the power and the glory. The room glimmered with majesty. She wondered if her father could taste it. 

CJ stood well back from the cameras when she gave the signal, but flinched nonetheless as flecks of light burst open around her. She curled her fingers into a fist and tried to hold her tension there. He would notice if it kept twitching around the length of her body. She swallowed the acknowledgement that he already had. 

"That's enough," she called. 

There was more air to breathe when the event had been cleared of press, but there were still altogether too many people staring at her. It reminded her of high school and being too much of everything. She was used to being a poor fit. She wasn't used to feeling that she wasn't enough. 

She walked her father up and down the room, making up names of art she didn't recognise. She talked too fast and introduced him only to those few she could be sure weren't waving an axe above her neck. 

"So, what do you think?" It had to be the seventh or eighth time she'd asked a variant on the question, and twirled her hands in accompaniment. 

She hugged her wrap tighter around her shoulders, hoping to disappear within. Her father's eyes followed. 

"Spectacular, isn't it?" Her fingers trailed across the impossibly polished surface of a marble pillar she would have liked to shelter near. "It's not that it's beautiful, though it is, incredibly... Isn't it incredible?" 

Tal nodded, and she could tell by the tremble around his bright eyes that he was about to laugh at her. 

"It's that it's where it is, you know? It's- Really, it's the people. These people are incredible." 

A bubble of awe escaped her lips in a tiny sigh and rose to commune with the thrill in the atmosphere. 

He smiled. "And you're one of them." 

Her heart skipped, then yanked back in the opposite direction. "Oh, Dad." She ducked her head and tugged at the bodice of her dress. "Do you want another drink?" 

He brandished a glass of champagne, nearly full. She didn't think he cared for it. "You should have one." 

"I shouldn't. I'm working. Kind of." She managed a wry grin. "It's not always like this." 

"I know." 

Her eyelids drooped. She hadn't expected to feel like this when she brought her father here. 

"How much of the coverage have you seen?" she asked. 

He turned around to face the dance floor. "It's always lovely to see you." He paused. "But you know I don't watch much television, darling." 

She wiped the edge of the wrap past the corner of her eye and shook it out, losing her grip on one end. 

"Claudia Jean," a strangely soothing remonstration. 

He stilled her flapping hands with a gentle pat and took hold of the ends of the mossy fabric, settling it around her shoulders. She looked down at his hands as he adjusted with confident tugs. He smoothed it under his palm before dropping a kiss on her forehead. There weren't many who could do that when she stood straight. 

"There." 

She couldn't look. 

Her fingers tangled with the tiny straps barely holding the dress up. 

He clucked his tongue in impatience. 

"CJ, if your breasts were showing, I wouldn't be seen with you. Would you stop worrying about the dress?" 

Nowhere else to go, her hands drifted down and together. She clasped them by her middle, digging her nails in. 

"I'm not worried about the dress." 

She didn't have to look to know he was rolling his eyes. She'd missed him. 

"No kidding." 

She hooked her arm through his, clinging to his shirt. It was pleasant not to care, for once, if anyone noticed how hard she was squeezing. 

"Why the remodelling anyway?" He gestured from her hair to the shoes that were spreading an ache up her calves. She was glad he couldn't see her painted toes. 

"Mrs. Bartlet thought it would make me feel better." Her posture lightened at the mention of one of her idols. "We went shopping. The secret service cleared the store. Can you believe that?" 

He let her talk. It perplexed her at first that he seemed more impressed by her storytelling than her stories, but she exaggerated her imitations of her subjects' voices anyway. 

"It's good of her to take that kind of interest," she said. "I didn't think she'd have time after, well, after we won. It's strange. I mean, we knew them before. And now they're..." 

The President's hearty laugh could be heard even from the other side of the room. She hoped his jokes were funny, and if he couldn't manage that, she hoped they were clean. 

"Do you like the dress?" she finished lamely. 

She'd never known her father's gaze be anything other than keenly appraising, and she trusted his eye. 

"It's very flattering," he acknowledged. "But it's not very you, sweetheart." 

Zoey Bartlet called out a greeting as she passed, dragging Josh to the dance floor. They stopped near to where Sam was tripping over Donna's toes. 

"I suppose you're too exalted to dance with me nowadays," Tal said. 

CJ felt the smile rise from her chest and lift her features, raising a rosy glow behind it. 

She loosened her grip on his shirt and slid down his arm until she could clasp his hand. 

Followed by the stares of a party full of people who didn't respect her, CJ hadn't felt so awkward doing this since she'd made it through puberty. 

A slight fumbling and entangling of fingers, and she wondered if the tightening on her hand was intentional, until he relaxed, satisfied with the grip. He turned her by the waist, facing the action. She drew her posture and poise up through the hand on his shoulder. They fit, she and he. 

"You're still too stiff," he complained. "Your body is your best friend. You've never trusted it." 

She sighed and unwound into his arms. Twenty years ago, there had been nothing more embarrassing than being moved around the floor, and she was sure there were times he'd enjoyed her discomfort. Time had softened and weathered until tonight it was release to surrender herself to being led. 

The watered-down music didn't stick in her mind but she found what remained of the beat in her hips, trusting the instinctively- measured time in Tal's nudges. The urge to show off grew from the warmth of his hands and she enjoyed the tickle of silk against her legs when her skirt swung with her step. 

A lifetime's occasions woven into the steps: the edge of arrogance in his pace was her graduation; the smirk on his face, her brother's wedding. A birthday in each sliding step nearer the centre of the room and a sharp turn for each memory of anniversaries that still stung a little. 

"You could've brought Molly, you know," she said. "I'm glad you didn't. But you could have." 

He circled in one step more than she could fit and she tightened her grip to keep from losing balance. She suspected he'd done it on purpose. 

"Mrs. Lapham to you," he said with a light smack on her back. He steadied her back into the rhythm before adding, "Anyway, she isn't tall enough. A bad habit in my wives." 

CJ's head drooped against his shoulder, his hand stroking her back through the dress. He'd moved them close enough to hear the President regale the company with war stories from the campaign. They were addressed to a group of three or four, but force of personality lifted his voice to fill the room. Abbey looked to be trying to talk him down, but he was drawing a crowd. Leo whispered in Abbey's ear, a broader grin on his face than she'd seen since election night. Sam and Josh, having escaped their respective partners, watched together. CJ looked around for Toby. 

"You put him here as much as any of them," her father said. She felt her hand squeezed and clung back as if her dreams depended upon it. 

Over his shoulder, she caught sight of Toby, arguing with someone holding a tray of drinks. After a moment she thought she could make out his voice over the President's and the music. 

"Daddy, I'm sorry but you're going to have to excuse me for a minute." 

He released his hold, looking around for some sign of emergency. 

"If you stand right there, the First Lady will come dance with you. She can't bear to see a handsome man on his own." 

He looked pointedly down his nose. "I think I'm all danced out." 

She could measure years of her mother's frustration in the immoveable set of his face, and for once it made her smile. 

"Fine, then hang around near the President. He wants to talk to you about numbers." 

"He's an economist. What does he know about numbers?" Tal laughed, a sound so brief she wondered if she'd imagined it. "Besides, I've forgotten how to count, now that I'm just a silly old man." 

She peered beneath his arch twinkle, wondering if he really believed that's what she thought. She'd spent years believing her words bounced off him. 

She kissed his cheek and lingered over wiping off the lipstick. "I'll be back soon. Behave yourself." 

She decided to take his stalking gaze as cover from fair weather friendly faces. 

Toby growled audibly when she plucked the glass from his hand and for a moment she saw more of his teeth than she did when he smiled. She knocked back the dregs and he watched darkly as her body shuddered through the dress. She would need the fortification. 

"You're making an ass of us," she hissed. 

It wasn't a good sign that he didn't have an insult deeper than his sunken glare to sling back. 

Turning on his heel, he stalked from the ballroom rather than let himself be led. He'd have needed a better weapon than his body language to keep her from following. 

She would have viewed it as capitulation that he went to her office, but a look at his eyes revealed that he barely knew where he was. 

"Andi was supposed to be here." His sentences were full of cracks. "We arranged-" 

He didn't look near her but she didn't look away. It was hard to see in this crumpled figure the force of fury and devotion she'd met half her life ago. She remembered him electric. 

She didn't like what love had done to this man she'd loved in her own way. 

He spoke aloud but she felt like an intruder. "It's not about the baby," he admitted. The atmosphere strained to hold them. "I don't think it's..." 

"I'm sorry." It was the only thing she could say without looking away. 

"She couldn't even bring herself to come." His voice spewed disgust and she couldn't be sure it wasn't directed at her. 

"Toby, you're getting divorced." The strain showed in her voice. "You're going to have to get used to Andi not being there." 

He launched his body to the other side of the office, a violent turn and his hands to his head, a more powerful gesture than any physical distance. It was her job, but representing the truth had its downsides. People were always running away. 

She whispered, "Toby, I'm sorry." 

He braced his hands against the wall, banging his head in slow motion. 

"We're not going to talk about this," he said. She could have told him that one. 

He didn't turn around and she was embarrassed to stare at his back. 

He jerked when she touched him. She wasn't surprised when he pushed her back, but he followed, all the way to her desk when she stumbled backwards against it. That was a different proposition altogether. 

She put out her hands for balance and he caught them. She opened her mouth. He caught that, too. 

It felt like glory. 

He'd been drinking whisky older than himself, but he tasted of the champagne passed round the night Wiley dropped out. The edges of the desk under her back became the tortuous chair he'd presented her with when she first set foot in New Hampshire. His weight on her was the crush of the rooms filling as people heard of them and flocked to lend a hand. His arms pulling her body against him reminded her of the pride he carried around with him. So, so right, his smoke-swamped aftershave was all she'd been able to smell when she buried her face in his neck because she couldn't watch the final results come in. They'd won. 

She reached around to clear a space behind her and he unzipped her while her back was turned. She gasped, bare against the air and he steadied her with hands around her waist, just like her father, waiting down the hall. 

Toby's beard rasped the slope of her breast as he drew the nipple between his lips, her moan prolonged and dragged up a register, ending in a harsh breath, "No." 

He stilled. She didn't have the will to push him away, so she shook her head. He drew back from the tickle of her hair on his neck. She tried to think of a way to explain they couldn't desecrate what they'd fought for with a frantic tumble he would regret the next time he faced Andi. Then he was on his feet and at the door and the time for explanations was past. 

"Toby. Help me with the dress, please." 

His fingers were restless and jerky with the zip and it got stuck twice. He flinched every time she reached out. 

"You don't want this. You want her," as if he needed reminding. 

She tried to kiss him goodbye, but he was already gone. 

She would have years to count the ways things might have been different. 

* 

("you're my guys") 

Donna was on the offensive, arms flapping as soon as CJ approached Josh's office. She opened the door and waited until he looked up before instructing CJ, "Don't let him move anything." Josh waved her away. "Don't let him touch anything unless it's an emergency. Do you think Leo would be mad if we stapled his hands to the desk?" 

He moved quickly enough to slam the door behind her. 

"She's-" He hesitated long enough to stop taking it out on his hair. He was going to be bald before the end of their first term. "So what are you?" 

CJ turned her back and regarded the blackboard, squinting to make out Donna's handwriting. 

He leaned against the desk, assessing the craziness of her mood. 

She asked, "What are we going to do?" 

"Toby needs some space to get his head together. You need to ignore the, ah, stuff, and keep doing what you do. I need to make Donna stop talking for one full hour." 

"I was talking about the media problem." 

"CJ, Casey Creek was bad, but if you're going to come back from this, you need to-" 

Her face jerked into the light and in the moment between facing her sleepless eyes and a defensive hand coming up to her hair, his words turned over in his stomach. 

"I meant the media director's vacancy." 

"Oh." 

He waited for her anger and felt cold in its absence. He hadn't known her long enough. 

"We should wait for Toby if we're going to talk about that," he ventured. 

She nodded vaguely. "You think he'll be okay?" 

He nodded and stopped when he noticed she still hadn't. 

"CJ? It'll blow over. All of it." 

She looked like she was trying to shake something into her head, or out of it. "Do you think it ruined things for my dad?" 

"You're his daughter, CJ." The thought stung him into a soft smile, no dimples but sharp feelings. "This is the White House. He doesn't care if you don't know where everything goes yet." 

He kicked the chair out from the desk, inviting her to sit. She didn't seem to notice. 

"Look - did he teach you to swim?" 

An album's worth of summer snapshot visions woke her smile. "He taught me a lot of things." 

"Yeah." She'd relaxed enough for Josh to reach her shoulder if he stretched. "This is a big pond." 

The door opened and Sam arrived with a stumble and fluster, and promptly tried to appear as if he'd been there all along. "Sanctuary?" 

Josh lowered his eyes. "Sit down, CJ," he said softly. "You're not going anywhere." 

She let his hand on her shoulder guide her down, little better at hiding smiles than frowns. They both turned to Sam. "What did you do?" she demanded. 

Josh braced himself. Anything but sex. 

"Since when did I ever have to do anything?" 

A short-lived respite arrived in the form of a clamour from outside, Toby's yelling punctuated by reprimands from Donna. A violent shove sent the door flying into Sam. Toby glowered in the doorway. He didn't look at CJ. 

"If you two intend on sheltering this weasel, I think it only fair to warn you the consequences will be immediate and insufferable." 

"I only wanted you to know you can talk to me." 

"What in the name of all that's holy makes you think I would-" 

"I don't think Sam meant-" 

"You keep your mouth shut!" 

There wasn't room for the four of them, not without elbows colliding and whispers carrying. It reminded Josh of the campaign, falling over each other, falling towards Washington DC. It wasn't as long ago as it seemed. The argument continued but he wasn't listening, as he often hadn't. His mind was on the next step. 

He wandered idly to the blackboard and wiped some names off with the back of his hand. Donna would probably kill him. He tugged down an envelope pinned to the frame and pulled out a new photo. He smiled broadly. He hadn't known she'd put it there. 

"Hey." Toby interrupted himself in midstream and looked over Josh's shoulder. The White House photographer had managed to catch them all in a candid: Josh and Sam rubbing shoulders; CJ in her father's arms; Toby in the background, at the bar. There was only one thing that could hold them so enraptured ever since they'd found enlightenment at a farm in New Hampshire. In fact, the only one looking elsewhere was Tal Cregg, who hadn't taken his eyes off his daughter's face, but all five wore the same expression. 

"That's a good picture," said Toby. 

A smile passed between them like the last of the tension cigarettes on the campaign bus. 

"Five believers," said Josh. 

* 

("break's over") 

CJ turned off the engine and kept her hand on the key. 

"He's not going to thank us for this." 

Sam acted like doubts could be vanquished by toothpaste and determination. "That's okay. We reach out to our neighbour without hope of thanks or reward." 

She chuckled. Against the odds, Sam was still the hardest of them all to say no to, probably because deep down she hoped they could be the people he thought they were. 

If nothing else, he would bear the brunt of more of Toby's anger than she would. 

She picked up her plant pot and waited for him to open her door. 

She'd been banging on Toby's front door with her elbow for five minutes before there was any response. 

"What the hell-" 

She shoved the plant pot at his chest and stepped over the threshold before he could entertain a thought of slamming the door. It brought her within centimetres of his body. He breathed the spectrum of frustrations in the space between them. 

She brushed past him and turned in a circle around the bare room. "Certainly not my idea." "We thought you might appreciate some assistance," Sam offered. "Moving into a new place, it can be stressful. And you've had a hard day." 

CJ cut him off for his own good. "Actually, we didn't think you'd appreciate it one bit. But here we are anyway. It's going to be good for our moral fibre." 

She stepped away to take a longer look around and avoid his stare. The ceilings were high and the only thing wrong with the carpet was the space where clutter belonged. Light from the window limped across the room and settled dully in paler puddles against the off- white paint. With no world inside to illuminate, it made the street outside shimmer. The only life in the room was buried in brown boxes. 

Toby shut the door behind them, a quiet gesture of acceptance she thought might break her heart. 

"We brought stuff," she said. 

"This is from the President, to make the place smell like home." Sam handed across a cigar box, then raised his elbows to let the cushions wedged underneath drop. "Those are for comfort. This is because we didn't know if you had cooking implements." He held out the pizza box, looking to be relieved of his final burden. Toby glared. 

"And this is for you to kill," CJ announced, consigning the plant pot to the floor. She wasn't entirely sure what was growing in it, but she liked the pattern on the rim, and a splash of colour wouldn't end him. "I have a chair," he said. 

CJ turned back to face them. "Yeah, but it looks lonely." She prodded at one of the boxes. "There's nothing fragile in this?" 

"Those are my books. CJ, I don't know what-" 

She moved one of the cushions to the uppermost surface of the box and unceremoniously flopped her weight onto it. The creak infused the room with human presence. 

"One last thing." She flipped the top off a beer, sending it flying into the corner. It wasn't home if there wasn't mess to clear. She handed Sam the bottle and passed another to Toby, leaving him to open it himself. 

Looking at his face, she felt a trace of guilt for their intrusion. She'd made a friendship out of backing out of his space. She'd missed, perhaps, the expansion of the space around him as things grew worse. 

And just because it had been the right thing to do didn't mean it didn't crush her to think of how she'd pushed him away. 

It wouldn't kill him, she thought, if she pushed her way in for once. 

"Hey, you unpacked the TV. We can watch Josh." 

It was easier for Toby to ignore her when there was someone else there, and they could exchange words without feelings. It felt easier, with her backside on his books, cold pizza in her lap and beer sweating onto the new carpet. 

She was resting her head against the wall and listening to the headlines over the distinctive dongs of the Capitol Beat theme. The room, she felt, was broken in. Sam was expressing his desire to have more sex and Toby was calling him a freak. 

"That's what I said to Josh." 

"Shut up, Sam." 

"Just keep it off my desk," she warned. "I hate when the news is about us." It seemed like only yesterday the thought had thrilled her. 

She groaned as soon as Mark Gottfried started talking. "The Mickey Mouse joke, again." 

"It wasn't Mickey Mouse," Toby said. "It was big ears. Hollywood players with big ears." 

"Because they're like Mickey Mouse." She waved ears in the air with her beer. "Cartoons, buffoons, not real people." 

"That's how they took it. That's not how he meant it." 

"Well, Disney's not over it yet and Bartlet For America got a lot of money from those buffoons." 

"And yet they still don't appreciate his humour." 

"I won a trip to Disney World once," Sam broke in. The others turned around, exchanging a look. It was their first in a while. "My dad made me give it to a scholarship kid at my school. Everything was a struggle for his mom, so it was a nice thing to do. Kind of sucked when I was eight, though. Dad said he'd take me the next summer but he was away a lot that year." 

"How much has he had to drink?" asked CJ. 

"I'm trying to make you two feel better about your troubles," he protested. 

"Thank you, Sam, but at least they don't appear to be baying for my blood tonight." 

No, they'd moved onto condoms in schools. The Christian right weren't high on her list of concerns at the moment. 

Toby nodded, half an eye on Josh's exuberant onscreen presence. "And my troubles kicked me out of the house, so I'm good." 

She found herself reaching out. He glanced at her outstretched hand and laughed before lifting the bottle to his mouth. She smiled and looked back at the television. Josh was getting warmed up and Mary Marsh didn't look happy. 

"So, right now our troubles are a joke," she said. "About Mickey Mouse ears." 

"We need someone in media," Toby said, not for the first time. 

"Are they going to come with a ball gag made to measure for our boss? 'Cause otherwise I don't think they're going to be much use." 

Mary was reaching her puffed up peak and Josh looked like he was going to combust. His friends were entertained, until he did. 

"Lady, the God you pray to is too busy being indicted for tax fraud." 

Sam flinched. Toby choked on his beer. CJ said, "Shit." 

A phone started to ring and all three reached at once. 

"Leo." 

Toby picked up while CJ cleared up the remains of the food and Sam trashed the empties. Their hands were clumsy, their attention glued to Josh fumbling for dry land. 

Toby was ready first. 

"Back to work." 

* End 


End file.
